Albumen CDV portrait of James H. Lane. Unmarked. Pencil inscription to verso reads: "Gen James H. Lane / Militia Kansas / U.S. Senator 1861-66."

Lane is depicted wearing civilian clothes with an outer belt, a cloth ornament pinned to his lapel, and a top hat. He holds a bayonetted rifle in the crook of his arm with his hand tucked in his jacket in a contemporary sign of gentility. The hilt of his sword hanging from his belt is visible.

James Henry Lane (1814-1866) was a leader of the pro-Abolition Jayhawkers during the tumultuous Bleeding Kansas period. After their success and Kansas's entry into the Union in 1861 as a free state, he was elected as one of the new state's first U.S. Senators. At the opening of the war, he organized the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Kansas Volunteers and saw action at the Battle of Dry Wood Creek, the Siege of Lexington, and raids leading to the Sacking of Osceola. In December 1861, he was appointed brigadier general of volunteers, prompting a lengthy debate about whether sitting U.S. Senators could concurrently serve as generals. As a culmination of the conflict, his commission was cancelled on 21 March 1862. Later that year, however, he organized the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment, the first Black regiment organized in a northern state and the first to see combat during the Civil War. In August 1863, Lane was the target of the Lawrence Massacre by Quantrill's Raiders, with guerrillas shouting, "Remember Osceola!" Lane was able to escape via a ravine into a cornfield. He was reelected as senator in 1865, but in the early Reconstruction period he was accused of financial irregularities and abandoning the ideals of Radical Republicans. On 1 July 1866 he died by suicide.

A rare image of a polarizing figure.

[Civil War, Union, Confederate, Bleeding Kansas, Kansas, John Brown, Slavery, Abolition, Enslavement, Emancipation, Early Photography, CDV, Carte de Visite, Militaria]